2009 UFL season in review: New York Sentinels
What can one say about a football team that doesn’t win a single game? The first thing that we could say is that if it were not for the Detroit Lions 0-16 campaign last year that they were the worst professional football team ever, however it seems the Detroit Lions will retain that tile for a while. This winless campaign is more a league problem than an individual team problem, the UFL features two really good teams, and two pretty bad teams. While the California Redwoods where able to make numerous roster changes to help their cause, the Sentinels were unable to do just that , and suffered a long list of injuries.
The first problem seems to be the Sentinels have the wrong Head Coach. While Tim Cottrell was a very fine Defensive assistant in the NFL, the USFL, and among the College Ranks, the simple fact here is he was passed over several times for NFL Head Coaching jobs. It seems those clubs were right to take on pass on Cottrell. In the end he was the lowest profile coach of the four UFL teams, and since he was coach of the New York team the spotlight could have been his, however a winless campaign is not something a coach wants on his resume.
The Sentinels had all kinds of problems on both sides of the ball, but many of their problems stemmed from the inconsistent play of their Offensive Line. Granted they suffered numerous injuries to said line, but good football teams are able to rise above that. This is also a team that had four men take snaps as QB and all four were equally ineffective. They could not move the ball either through the air, or on the ground. With 140 rushing attempts they gained only 416 yards on the ground and it took them more than five games to score a rushing TD.
In the end turnovers were also a problem for this tem, they gave up 17 turnovers, the most in the league, and had four in their final game. The simple fact here is before the UFL tries to expand they should take sometime and fix the problems of the Sentinels.
